The Pack (15 page)

“Satisfaction Guaranteed.”
He spoke through the pulp.

Martha glared at him.

“Still,” he began again, “is it not indeed remarkable that here I am who once had such power over one boy soldier, Skreech by name, and now am as but a puppy in the hands of Martha?” He cocked his head and smiled weakly. “Gentle Martha.”

“Shut it, Red Dog. I've told you, I'm as much Skreech as ever I was.”

“Oh, no doubting, no doubting. The best of both you are. A wonder of the times. And have these times not thrown up one more wonder yet? I speak of Red Dog, the good dog, the Good Samaritan at last.”

Hunger snapped and Red Dog fell silent, absorbed in his turnip, as if it were the most wonderful gift imaginable. Bradley watched him, as he himself gnawed at his turnip skin, and he also thought how unlikely it was that Red Dog should be sitting in their company, sharing their food. So unlikely, in fact, that—not for the first time—he found himself running over in his head the story of how it had come to be.

*   *   *

After they had left the driver of The Mount's refuse lorry, clutching his heart and swearing he would never be the same again, they had loped through the quietest streets of the Invisible City, sticking close to the walls. Martha had begun by leading them, but soon Hunger sensed the direction in which they wished to travel, set the compass inside his head for north and scouted on before them.

When they came to the river on the north side of the Invisible City, it was almost safely dark. They rested again under a bridge till darkness was complete, then set off to cross the ganglands of the Forbidden Territories. Until they cleared the city zones, Bradley had decided it was safer to travel by night.

Martha seemed to have a sixth sense for danger. She knew what would happen to her if she were captured and fear made her always alert. Twice, she managed to pull up short, just when a patrol was about to pass. They had clung to the moonless shadows, Bradley's hand loose around Hunger's jaws.

At other times, Hunger's hearing picked up that, a few streets away, howling boy soldiers were watching some contest or baiting each other and he altered their route accordingly.

Whatever happened, Floris and Victor would not be separated. When the Pack ran across streets that threatened danger, Victor and Floris did so together. And Victor never took so much as a catnap before he was sure Floris was safely sleeping. Her cough tormented her worst at night, but it was a while, after all that had happened, before Bradley realized that it was not simply the cough she struggled to suppress or the fear of flight that had silenced Floris. Sometime in the past miserable weeks, shock had made her mute.

She smiled at Victor nonetheless, who, as they rested, would take risks to bring her back scraps of food—a burnt sausage, a slice of pizza, once even a piece of fruit.

And so, hiding up, sleeping by day and travelling by night, they cleared the violence of the Forbidden Territories of Footrot and Screel and the more ramshackle dangers of the Zones and came to the countryside. Where things were no easier.

At least in the city they could hide—there were walls, old buildings, bridges. It was a world they knew. Sure, there were risks that had to be taken—roads and squares to be crossed. However, these were calculated risks between one place of safety and another and there were many signs for the senses to consult before the start of the smallest journey. But this …

*   *   *

They heard the straining engine of another food truck and once more cowered in the ditch. They could glimpse it as it approached; imagine its trays of fresh eggs and vegetables, its milk churns, the sacks of wheat from the vast stores of the farm Compounds. But then they had to tuck down their heads as the lorry's chained tyres sent snow spraying over them. No bad thing. The two guards, one riding shotgun in the cabin and the other at the back of the lorry, were always vigilant. Recently, a gang of vagrants had placed spikes in the snow and reared up from the ditch as the truck spun out of control, its back end lodging in a ditch and its cargo spilling everywhere.

The two guards—who had since received other postings—had seen the hunger and the hate in the eyes of the ragged men who came at them. With wide-armed, help-yourselves gestures, they had disappeared into a barren field. What became of the driver was a mystery.

“OK,” Bradley called, once the engine was a distant buzz. They climbed out of the ditch, brushing off the snow.

He could never get used to this landscape. Even a few minutes in the darkness of the ditch was enough to wash memory of it from him, so that when he climbed out and raised his eyes to it again, he couldn't quite believe it. He could see further than he had ever been able to see in his life—field upon field to the far horizon. It reminded him of his dreams of the sea. At times, he felt he was shrinking—a tiny, insignificant thing that could be stamped on. At others, that he was expanding, like a balloon, to fill the empty space, and in time would surely burst.

Martha and Floris were similarly ill at ease, constantly glancing behind them. But the more they traveled through this countryside, the less there seemed to be behind them—just space, space before them, space behind. Space to fill with their fears.

Of them all, Hunger and Victor felt most at ease. Hunger bounded from the confines of the ditch, Victor close behind him. As they waited for the others—for Bradley, Martha and Floris—to take warily to the road again, Hunger made circles over the truck's tracks; Victor dipped his hands, running his knuckles over the imprints of the chains. Something was calling to them that, as yet, the others could not hear.

Of course, over the weeks when they had been travelling through it, Bradley was slowly beginning to read the language of this landscape. It was not as flat as he had first imagined. It had hidden shallows and its horizon was not fixed. He soon learned how to read its contours by following the lines of the high wire-meshed fences that enclosed the Compounds. In the centre of these, huge silos gleamed in the winter sun and at night, like ghost ships, the low, eerie lights of the hothouses marked their place in the darkness. Here tomatoes, grapes, artichokes and melons confounded the seasons.

The farm they would find to take shelter in on the day of the storm could not have been more different.

*   *   *

It began with a few white flakes swirling down from a blue sky. Strangely, it felt warmer than it had done for some days. But then the sky had darkened. Soon it was hidden from them by the unravelling snow. Long, twisting, broken threads of it were whipping into their faces. It was too far to go back to the broken old hut where they had spent the previous night and, besides, how would they ever find it now?

For a while they plodded on—“Stay close,” Bradley ordered. “Stay close”—following the deep tracks of the trucks. But soon these were obliterated and Bradley was lifting his eyes into the driving snow, looking for any shape that could give shelter. Oh, for the known terrors of the city now!

Then he saw it, whatever it was—a darkening in the snow. Perhaps it was one of the Compound buildings and a fence lay between them and it. Perhaps they hadn't been travelling north at all, but round in a circle, and this was the first building of the city where all judgements awaited them. Perhaps it was simply a door—a door that would open and, in spite of all their efforts, they'd be brushed away into the nothingness Bradley always worried awaited them. He was wrong to have thought his story might have ended with Red Dog or in The Mount. This was a story he could not remember the Old Woman telling—the door into the dark—yet he must walk towards it and take the others with him: Victor with one arm round Floris, as every so often he dipped his knuckles to the snow to satisfy them both that it would take their weight, and Martha, gripping the edge of Bradley's jacket. Hunger was beside them, then ahead, turning from the storm to assure Bradley that there was a destination worth pursuing.

Bradley stumbled and rose and ploughed on. Glancing up now, he could see the huge door had shape and volume, but no more. The tops of fence posts, like black, upturned heels, guided him off the road towards it.

They dipped their heads and followed him.

Floris screamed. The wind ripped her scream from her and bore it away. A scrap of it reached Bradley, who turned his back on the storm and took the few paces back to where she stood, pointing. Her head had been dipped like the others, but she had turned her face to the side to see, staring at her from the snow, its last hot breath leaving it, a young calf. Perhaps it had escaped from the nearest Compound; perhaps a truck load of them had come unstuck. Whatever, someone would have questions to answer.

The calf had slipped into the ditch and the snow had drifted against it, supporting it, while making it impossible for it to escape. Both she and it hooded with snow, Floris was the last thing on earth that the calf saw.

Bradley could only nod at her and urge Victor to pull her away. He knew she must be desperately tired. He himself was fighting the desire to lie down on the soft snow and drift into sleep. How had he got to this place, to this terrible tiredness? He felt he had been carrying a huge weight on his shoulders for years.

Already he was on his knees and falling like a tree, a tree whose leafy head was half dreaming. Margaret would be serving tea soon. He would tell her simply to lay the tray down on the thick carpet before the fire. She would see off the dog nipping and pulling at his shoulder, the girl who had slipped a hand under his arm.

At last he would be unencumbered.

“Almost there!” Martha shouted from a long way away and that was all Bradley remembered of that day.

*   *   *

The cold woke him early. For a moment he thought he was back in the basement, back “home” in the Zone. There was the same shaped darkness, a similarly sharp, earthy smell. Only more so. Then the light hatchings of straw which covered him brought him back to the present moment: to Victor and Floris curled into each other beneath their own nest of straw; to Hunger, who had briefly opened an eye, and to the warmth at his back that was Martha.

Bradley shivered. There was a hard block of ice in his chest that Martha had not been able to melt. He needed to bend his legs, to gather himself into a tight ball of warmth. He hooked his hands behind his knees, but either he was too weak or else his legs were too heavy: he drew short, sharp breaths with the effort. All he needed, he reasoned, was a little more sleep.

Martha was leaning over him, saying, “We can't travel with you like this. We must stay here another day at least.”

“No, must go now,” said Bradley, and a Bradley of light and of air rose up, leaving the other one—the one made of earth and pain and fever—lying on the barn floor. Bradley watched him go, before he fell again into a dreamless sleep.

He woke searching for his last memory, wondering where he had arrived.

Knives of light sliced through the darkness. Victor rubbed his eyes and pulled Floris closer to him. The minute she woke, he knew her hacking cough would begin.

Hunger's head lifted when he heard the creak of snow-steps outside. He was on his feet and growling low in his throat, when the barn door was pulled open.

Framed against the light, not yet used to the darkness of the barn, the farmer heard a scuffling as Floris took shelter behind Victor. Victor's teeth were bared, glinting like the dog's—the dog, more like a wolf, its hackles up, showing all it had of threat.

The farmer reached for the pitchfork he knew stood by the door. It was braced in his hands when he told them: “Look, I don't care how many of you there are, you can't stay here. We've little enough to feed ourselves if that's what you're after.”

More spitting. Growling.

“Believe me, I'm keeping nothing from you. There's nothing for vagrants on this farm. You'd best be on your way.”

Bradley looked on from where he lay. Martha was standing now, between him and the man. He knew that if the man kept threatening them with the pitchfork, Hunger would attack him. He imagined Hunger in mid-air, with the twin prongs of the fork plunged into his chest, his own weight impaling him. Victor would be next, spitting and screeching his life away.

Perhaps there was another way this encounter could go, but he could not see it. The man holding back the light had come to cast them all into the world of sleep. Sooner the better.

In the doomed calm, nothing could surprise Bradley, not even when Martha turned on Hunger.

“Hunger. Stop that now. Now.” Her face was close to Hunger's, her eyes locked onto his. Hunger turned his head and glanced down to Bradley and then turned back to Martha. Her eyes had not moved. His growl was like water passing down a drain.

Victor too had quietened, alert to what might happen now. In the silence, there was only Floris's cough.

“Please,” Martha began, “we mean no harm. But what could we do—lie down and die in the snow?”

“I can't worry about that,” said the farmer. “There are plenty of ways to perish here and hunger's the one we'll all face if you stay here.”

“We can't leave now,” said Martha. She pointed to Bradley. “He's not fit to move himself and we can't carry him. If we leave, he stays here and he dies here.”

The man's shoulders slumped, his pitchfork pointed towards the floor.

“But we needn't starve—any of us,” Martha began again. “Please, come with me. I've something to show you. Hunger, you come too.”

“I'm not saying,” the man said. “I'm not saying … anything…”

“I know,” said Martha. “Just come.”

Outside the sky was high and blue—empty and light. The snow was crisp underfoot.

“Where are you taking me?” said the farmer. But there was little edge to the question, now he had seen that the wolf-dog was the only threat and that this boy or girl—whatever lay beneath all the torn layers—seemed to have control over it. The pitchfork merely steadied him now on the track.